Time to kick-start action on new stadium

An exterior view of the Charges store in the Qualcomm Stadium complex.

John Gastaldo

An exterior view of the Charges store in the Qualcomm Stadium complex.

An exterior view of the Charges store in the Qualcomm Stadium complex. (John Gastaldo)

William Osborne

“I don’t want to move the franchise out of San Diego, but I do want a chance to make money. All I ask now is that the city offer me real hope for a better facility in the future. I’m just seeking encouragement. That’s all I want. If I get it, we’ll never leave San Diego.”

The above comments were made by Barron Hilton, then the majority owner of the San Diego Chargers, to Jack Murphy, the revered sports editor of The San Diego Union, in a column published Oct. 31, 1963. Murphy’s column was prompted by reports that Hilton was considering moving the Chargers back to Los Angeles only three years after he had moved the team here from Los Angeles. Hilton made clear that his unhappiness was not with San Diego or its fans, but with the team’s home at Balboa Stadium, which had been remodeled for the Chargers in 1960 to accommodate 34,500 people but which still proved inadequate to the Chargers’ needs. Hilton said he was losing $200,000 to $300,000 a year.

If it seems that fundamentally not much has changed in the ensuing 51 years, it is because, well, fundamentally not much has changed in the ensuing 51 years. A professional sports team is, at its core, a business — a business that must make money and must constantly modernize, on and off the field, to keep pace with the times. But it is the business of sports that produces a frequent friction with the cities that crave the “major league” status that comes with a pro team, with the loving fans who live and die with the team’s wins and losses and with the taxpayers often asked to foot the bill.

In that regard, San Diego is no different from most other cities with professional teams. And it explains the current friction between the Chargers, City Hall, the fans, and the taxpayers who would again be asked to pay at least part of the bill to replace Qualcomm Stadium, which replaced Balboa Stadium in 1967 and which after 47 years is no longer able to meet the needs of the Spanos family that now owns and controls the team.

Many fans and some influential figures in town continue to question the Spanoses’ commitment to keeping the Chargers in San Diego. But the truth is that the Spanos family has never put a deadline on its hopes for a new stadium here. To the contrary, they have spent millions seeking a suitable location for a new stadium. They have waited patiently through the political instability that followed the 2005 resignation of Mayor Dick Murphy, through the years of City Hall’s financial crisis and the Great Recession and through the political instability that followed the election of Mayor Bob Filner and his subsequent resignation.

And just last week, Spanos representatives quietly secured the permits needed for a multimillion-dollar expansion of the team’s headquarters at Chargers Park near Qualcomm, entirely at the expense of the family. That does not sound like owners about to pull up stakes.

In this package of commentaries by the U-T San Diego Editorial Board, the media company’s ownership hopes to kick-start a community conversation about the Chargers, what they mean to the San Diego region and how they can be kept here without breaking the backs of taxpayers and without sacrificing other critical municipal needs such as the city’s embarrassing roadways, the aged and deteriorating water and sewer infrastructure, public parks and other neighborhood priorities.

The ownership and the editorial board believe it can be done. It is time for a decision.